


Blessings

by CommanderTeatime



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Engagement, Episode: s03e18 The Beast Within, Fix-It, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Speculation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-14
Updated: 2019-04-14
Packaged: 2020-01-13 00:36:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18457886
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommanderTeatime/pseuds/CommanderTeatime
Summary: Magnus doesn't just go to Maryse's shop because he wants to help her decorate and because Alec wants him to, but because he wants to ask Maryse for her blessing before he proposes.





	Blessings

**Author's Note:**

> This is kinda rough, my pals, because I slept maybe three hours and I dealt with a ton of drunk people at work, but the whole day I couldn't stop thinking about this. Sorry if Maryse is a lil rough. I'm not entirely sure how to write her character just yet.

It had been heartbreaking to hear Alec so upset over the phone. He had kept his voice low and soft, most likely making the call from his office. He told her about the night before, about his attempt to propose to Magnus and how it had ended with heartbreak. 

“Magnus said he had something he had to talk to you about, could you just… ask him how he really is? He’s shut me down every time I’ve tried to ask. He insists he’s fine, but--” Alec cut himself off, a trait that Maryse had passed onto her eldest son. She wanted him to go on, but knew better than to push him to do so. 

She mixed in a little more cream with her coffee than usual. “I’ll do what I can, Alec, but you have to be more receptive to how Magnus might be feeling. He loves you with all his heart, and this is a lot for him.” She felt silly for not realizing that Alec had come to her to ask for the ring because he wanted to propose literally the next day. Maryse had been a fool to think her son would wait for a better time. 

Alec was more than a bull in a China shop. He was an unstoppable freight train headed straight down the tracks, incapable of avoiding or preventing whatever stood in his path. 

He exhaled softly, not strong enough to be a sigh. “I know, I’m trying, it’s just… it’s hard. He only talks to me when he’s already upset, and he doesn’t let me in enough to help him.” 

“All you can do is be there for him, sweetheart, remind him that he has someone in his corner, that he’s not alone. Don’t make him feel like he’s lost more than his magic.” She thought of how all of her new freetime had helped her, how she had taken the opportunity to finally enjoy New York for what it was, how she had let herself date Lucian even when her gut instinct told her the opposite. 

Alec was quiet for a moment, either too caught up in Institute work or thinking over what she had just said. She hoped for his sake that he was taking into account the few pieces of advice she could truly give him. “Thanks, mom.” 

“No problem, sweetheart.” 

“Magnus said he’ll stop by sometime this afternoon. I have a few meetings with the Clave because of Heavenly Fire.” He had told her some about what had gone down, and he had insisted that she didn’t worry, but she did. She had gnawed her fingernails to nubs as he had recounted all of what Isabelle and her vampire friend had done. 

She spent the rest of her time working through the inventory that she had started. Maryse had yet to find a lot of things in Elliot’s little antique bookstore-- an inventory, keys to the back room, any sort of marks for wards or protective spells. She knew that they were still in place, she could feel the cool breeze of the wards when she walked up the stairs to the apartment spaces that were now hers, and sometimes in the back room where she had found a box of book repair supplies. 

She had just finished rebinding a book of old French folktales when she heard the bells ring against the door. Maryse left the room to the store, finding Magnus standing there with a box in his hands. 

“Magnus!” She smiled and walked over to meet him as he set the box on the table. 

“Maryse, you’re looking as beautiful as ever.” 

Her eyes were focused on the box, on the gold and flowery things poking out the top of it. “What is this?” She said with a small laugh, pulling out a large, heavy gold bookend. 

“Some decor, I thought I’d help you a little with your store.” He smiled kindly and looked to the table that he had set the box on. “It looks like you’re doing some reorganizing.” 

Maryse pulled out a bouquet of flowers, colorful and bright against the dark lighting of the shop. “These are beautiful.” She smelled them, fresh cut and sweet. “I’ll get these some water. Make yourself at home.” 

She took the flowers upstairs with her, into the small apartment space above that she had started using as an office. It held a few things from home-- a handful of scarves, a jacket, some extra glasses, and a vase from the flowers that Lucian had given her to celebrate her purchase of the shop. 

Carefully, Maryse filled the vase with water and recut the ends of the flowers to place them inside of it, then walked back downstairs. 

Magnus already had a book in his hands and it took him a moment to realize that she had returned. He smiled. “You have quite the collection.” 

Maryse laughed tiredly, “I’ve been trying to inventory them, but I can only work through the English, French, and German texts.” 

He sighed, setting the book down. “Elliot had an obsession with German. He used to say that it was the only language for higher thought.” Magnus relaxed a little and Maryse was sure that it had to do with the familiarity of the store. 

“Were you and Elliot friends?” 

“Elliot wanted to be rivals.” Magnus explained, picking up another book and flipping through a few pages of it. “He turned to the Clave, harbored Circle members, hid their documents and correspondence.” 

Maryse settled into her seat and rested her head on her hands. “You were High Warlock, why didn’t you have him exiled?” 

He smiled a little, reminiscing. “Jocelyn and Dot convinced me that Elliot was a double agent, that he needed to stay in the City. Now that I’ve seen the Clave’s safe, I'm not so sure they were right.” 

She turned to look at the safe that she had worked with Lucian to crack. “It had information about the Morning Star sword.” 

Magnus looked a little intrigued by that. 

“I do, however, need your help with these, if you’ll provide it.” She motioned to the books in front of her, scattered all over the table, some in piles, some not. 

He smiled, “Of course.” 

“Any language, or?” Maryse stood and moved to the side of the table to look through the piles that she had somewhat arranged on her own. “I’ve got everything from Armenian to Russian.” 

Magnus looked at the piles, “I can translate anything, but Armenian.” He smiled and accepted the first book she placed into his hand, along with a notebook and pen. 

She settled back into her own seat with her own notebook and pen. “I’ve been making note of the title, the author, a publishing date if there is one, the language, and what it’s about if I can figure it out.” Maryse looked at her own notes which had started off neat and slowly turned into a mess of shorthand and quick scribbles. “Anything you want is yours to keep.” 

“That’s very generous of you.” He clicked his pen a few times and started to write, his beautiful cursive carefully filling lines with information about the spellbook in front of him. 

Maryse had to focus on her own work, on the book that was sitting in front of her, written in Latin. She had figured out that the book was about early love potions and incantations, small superstitious things that didn’t seem like true magic. She jotted it down in her notes and moved onto the next book. 

They worked in silent for a few moments until Maryse couldn’t stop herself from pestering Magnus again. It was strange being able to spend so much time with a man she had heard so much about. Magnus had always been on the other end of something-- either her Clave duties, the other end of a phone call, or in the conversations she had with Alec. 

She knew that Alec hadn’t proposed yet, that Magnus was struggling with life as a mundane. Maryse couldn’t really imagine what he was going through. Losing her runes had been like losing and limb, but for Magnus to lose his magic? Something so intimate and personal, something so unique to him that it couldn’t be shared; she knew that it was losing a type of identity she had never experienced. 

“I know that Alec asked you to do this.” He said after a few more moments of silence. “I appreciate that you haven’t asked me how I'm doing.” 

Maryse’s heart broke a little, hearing Magnus suddenly sound so dejected. “I know, on some level at least, how hard it is, and I know that working helps. If you want to talk about it, I’m here for you, but I’m not going to ask you to tell me what I want to hear because Alec wants to hear it.” 

Magnus’s breathing hitched a little as he exhaled. “Does it ever go away?” He looked up from the pages in front of him to meet her eyes. “The feeling that it’s gone?” 

“There will be times when you forget entirely that you had another life, and sometimes remembering will make it all seem so far and distant, like a dream.” Maryse answered. She thought about how different it was, to lose her runes, Robert, the Institute, all at the same time. It had been like having her feet taken out from underneath her, only to find her own ground. 

He seemed to relax with her answer, the tension in his shoulders eased and his fingers went back to the book in front of him. “I hope I adapt to feel more like that.” He placed the book off to the side and picked up another, flipped a few pages and put it in front of himself. “Right now, it feels like all of the air has been sucked out of the world.” 

Maryse let herself relax, too. She hadn’t realized just how much tension she had been carrying in her own shoulders. “I know that feeling goes away. You have to let yourself mourn. You can’t hold in that hurt; let yourself be angry, let yourself cry and be upset, because if you hold that in, it’s only going to make getting better so much harder.” 

Magnus’s spirits lifted a little, a small smile on his face. “Thank you.” 

“No problem.” She turned back to her work, turned a page of one of the books in front of her. “Can I ask you a silly question?” 

“Sure.” 

“Was it you or Dot who had the relationship with Mark Twain?” 

  
  
  


The hours went by quickly. 

Maryse made tea, Magnus filled her afternoon with anecdotes about life in cities and countries she had never heard of with people she could have never imagined. They laughed, sometimes until they cried, chatting away through everything they could think of while working through a selection of Elliot’s old books. 

“I know you know French and Isabelle knows Spanish, but Alec has never told me what languages he speaks. Is he the only non-bilingual Lightwood?” Magnus asked, his teacup in hand. 

She rolled her eyes at the question. “Alec and Isabelle are both trilingual. I grew up speaking French at home and Robert grew up speaking Spanish. Izzy always took after her father. Jace knows French. Alec and Jace used to get in trouble for speaking French in front of their teachers, Izzy only wanted to communicate in Spanish, so when Alec stopped speaking both languages, they were forced to follow his lead.” 

Magnus smirked a little at that. “I’ll have to use that sometime.” 

Maryse snickered. “Don’t get me in trouble, please.” She begged, sipping her tea. 

He shook his head and closed the book in front of him. “Do you mind if I keep this one? It’s an old Spanish herb book. I have a friend who would probably like it.” 

“No problem, and let your friend know they’re welcome to the family and friends discount.

Magnus tensed a little, “Speaking of family and friends, I have something I’ve been meaning to ask you. I didn’t just come here because Alec wanted me to.” 

Maryse sat up a little. “Yes?” 

“I… I want your blessing. I want to ask Alexander to marry me.” 

Her heart hit the bones of her ribs hard. She couldn’t find the words to speak, only a smile on her face. 

“I know it’s soon, and sudden, but… Alec has been there for me like no one else and I don’t know what I would do without him. I’ve never… I’ve never loved anyone this way in all four hundred years of my life.” Magnus set down his tea. “If I had another four hundred years, or even four hundred thousand years, I’d want to spend them all with him.” 

Maryse blinked through her tears. “Magnus, oh my god, of course you have my blessing.” She dabbed at her eyes with her fingertips. “You’ve had it ever since you stopped Alec’s first wedding. You’ll have a wedding to plan now, and if anyone interrupts, they can take it up with me.” 

He laughed, tears of his own in his eyes. “Of course.” 

“I expect it to be the biggest party New York has seen-- the party of the century.” 

He laughed and took a sip of the tea she had placed in front of him. “Small wedding, but the engagement…” Magnus turned away to look at the floor, stunned by something. The mug slipped through his fingers and crashed against the floor, sending little glass shards all over the original tile. 

“Magnus?” Maryse was already on her feet, she placed a hand on his arm, hoping to bring him back to the present. 

He blinked twice and breathed in. “Sorry.” 

“Are you okay?” 

Magnus remained quiet for a second longer, his breathing still slow, eyes unfocused on the floor. “I… just… it feels like,” he stopped, his fingers curled into a fist and relaxed again, just as Maryse was going to reach for her phone and call Alec. He looked up and relaxed slightly. 

“Sorry, I think it’s best I head home.” He shook his head a little, standing from his chair. His foot stepped down on a shard of glass, crunching it underneath. He stepped back, “I’m so sorry.” He brushed his hand over the glass shards in front of him before he pulled on his jacket. 

Maryse let go of Magnus’s arm and looked down to avoid the shard of glass around them before she went to find some napkins to mop the spilled tea, only there was no glass to be found. She frowned and looked under the end of the table. 

Magnus’s teacup sat there, in one piece. 

She picked it up, tea inside of it still warm, and handed it to him wordlessly. 

He held it, his eyes wide, looking at the tea in his hand. “I… I need my phone.” His hands were beginning to shake, tears flooded his eyes and before he could even realize he was crying, he was looking through the pages and books they had tried to sort through. 

Maryse wanted to do something, to hold him? She wasn’t sure. Her hands went to the piles and started to sift through them.

Magnus laughed, rubbing his tears and smeared eyeliner on his face. “I don’t have to.” He murmured, and he straightened, snapped his fingers, and the device appeared in his hand. “I have to go call Alec, thank you, Maryse, thank you so much.” He said, as though she had somehow given him his powers back. “You’ll be the first person to know about the engagement party.” He said through a sniffle, and hurried out of the store, bells banged against the door behind him. 

She picked up the book he had forgotten to take with him and placed it apart from the others, her hands shaking with the absolute miracle that had taken place before her. Maryse blinked away her own tears and turned out the lights of the store before calling Lucian. 

**Author's Note:**

> Stories always have happy endings if you end them at the right moment :o)


End file.
